One hundred years later, tributes to the birth of modern art

By JIM BECKERMAN

STAFF WRITER |

The Record

"What is that supposed to be?"

Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2"

When confronted with the abstract blobs in a modern art museum, or the pongs and pings of "postmodern" music, who hasn't asked that? Out loud, if he's a lowbrow. Silently, if he's afraid of being mistaken for one.

Two scandalous, world-shaking events occurred in 1913, since credited with giving birth to modern art — or at least, announcing its arrival with blaring, dissonant trumpets.

From the moment the Armory Show opened its doors on Feb. 17, 1913 in New York, and Marcel Duchamp's notorious "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2" became the talk of the town, followed by the May 29 Paris debut of Igor Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring" that culminated in the most famous riot in music history, art lovers could take it for granted that whatever they were hearing or seeing, they wouldn't get it.

"It sort of marked the beginning of a revolution in painting," says Earl Davis of Fort Lee, whose father, Stuart Davis, was one of the more conventional artists showcased at the Armory.

In the coming months, several area events will pay tribute to this banner year.

Tonight, pianists Sarah Rothenberg and Marilyn Nonken can be heard playing the rarely performed two-piano version of "Rite of Spring," at the Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair. For those who want to catch the full ranting, raving and thundering of Stravinsky's masterpiece, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will be performing the orchestral version June 7 to 9 at Newark's NJPAC.

At the Montclair Art Museum, "The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913" showcases some 40 works, mostly American (not "Nude," which is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), featured 100 years ago at the Armory. Included was Stuart Davis' 1912 painting, "Romance/The Doctor," on loan to the Montclair Museum for the exhibition.

His jaunty "ashcan school" painting of a smirking lady and undressing man in a rowboat was not the stuff of which riots were made.

Neither was 1911's "Hackensack River" by Oscar Bluemner or 1911's "Sailing" by Edward Hopper (both in the Montclair exhibit). In fact, most of the 1,200-plus works at the International Exhibition of Modern Art — its official title — at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, was post-impressionist art that wouldn't raise an eyebrow, then or now.

What caused a sensation was a tiny, notorious group of wild, avant-garde works that — to conventional 1913 eyes — seemed a slap in the face of taste, rationality, even sanity.

"It was a relatively small percentage [of art], in two galleries in the back," says Gail Stavitsky, chief curator of the Montclair Museum. "You had to go through everything else to get to the 'chamber of horrors,' as they called it."

The shock of Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2," the most famous of these, was not the racy title. It was the painting itself. There was no nude, there was no staircase. Not to 1913 eyes, at least: just a bunch of angular, overlapping, jutting shapes.

Most of us, today, can see where a nude and staircase are at least suggested. Nor was Duchamp the first to create abstract art: Picasso, Braque and others had pioneered it a decade before.

By the early 1900s, over-refined European art was starting to look to new kinds of inspiration: to "primitive" cultures, to machines, to cinema, to the unconscious (Freud published his "Interpretation of Dreams" in 1900). Old dogmas were being questioned, new avenues explored. There was in fact a "new spirit" — the slogan of the Armory show.

But until 1913, most of this had not filtered down to the general public. "Nude Descending a Staircase," and the other "cubist," "futurist" works at the Armory, caused a sensation. There were snarky newspaper cartoons making fun of "Sun Rise in a Lumber Yard," or depicting a man staring at an abstract painting while standing on his head. "No! I do not see it yet," he says. The Chicago Record ran a contest: Spot the Nude in Nude Descending a Staircase.

"Through the media and press reports, the exhibition went beyond the usual suspects, the elites," says Alejandro Anreus, chair of the art department at Wayne's William Paterson University.

In 1913, more than today perhaps, the general public was engaged in the fine arts. Engaged, in the case of "The Rite of Spring," to the point of violence.

Music, like visual art, was becoming wilder in the early 1900s. Among the young lions: Igor Stravinsky, an expatriate Russian composer who teamed with the Paris "Ballets Russes" to present exotic ballets with dissonant modern scores.

Ballet, at the time, still meant ballerinas, tutus, pirouettes. "The Rite of Spring" ("Le Sacre du Printemps") involved pagan tribes, primitive rituals, human sacrifice. There is some question, today, about what really sparked the riot: whether it was the weird, herky-jerky choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, or the roaring, heaving, pounding, seething, utterly dissonant music (still shocking 27 years later, when Walt Disney used it for the dinosaur sequence of "Fantasia").

Loud as the music was, the crowd was louder. Two factions of the audience — booers and cheerers — began to attack each other, and then turned on the musicians. "Everything available was tossed in our direction, but we continued to play on," said conductor Pierre Monteux. Police had to remove at least 40 people. Eventually the manager had to turn up the lights to quiet the crowd. "Parisians hiss new ballet," ran the headline in The New York Times, which called it a "failure."

In fact, "The Rite of Spring" was a scandalous success — as it is, to this day. And far from being a mass of noise, it is actually a piece of great subtlety. Which is why the two-piano "reduction" being offered tonight is well worth hearing.

"You're not distracted by the Technicolor of the orchestra," says pianist Marilyn Nonken. "This is kind of like a black-and-white, very fine-line drawing. You can focus on the essence of the piece."

One hundred years later, tributes to the birth of modern art

When confronted with the abstract blobs in a modern art museum, or the pongs and pings of "postmodern" music, who hasn't asked that? Out loud, if he's a lowbrow. Silently, if he's afraid of being mistaken for one.

Two scandalous, world-shaking events occurred in 1913, since credited with giving birth to modern art — or at least, announcing its arrival with blaring, dissonant trumpets.

From the moment the Armory Show opened its doors on Feb. 17, 1913 in New York, and Marcel Duchamp's notorious "Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2" became the talk of the town, followed by the May 29 Paris debut of Igor Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring" that culminated in the most famous riot in music history, art lovers could take it for granted that whatever they were hearing or seeing, they wouldn't get it.

"It sort of marked the beginning of a revolution in painting," says Earl Davis of Fort Lee, whose father, Stuart Davis, was one of the more conventional artists showcased at the Armory.

In the coming months, several area events will pay tribute to this banner year.

Tonight, pianists Sarah Rothenberg and Marilyn Nonken can be heard playing the rarely performed two-piano version of "Rite of Spring," at the Alexander Kasser Theater in Montclair. For those who want to catch the full ranting, raving and thundering of Stravinsky's masterpiece, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra will be performing the orchestral version June 7 to 9 at Newark's NJPAC.

At the Montclair Art Museum, "The New Spirit: American Art in the Armory Show, 1913" showcases some 40 works, mostly American (not "Nude," which is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art), featured 100 years ago at the Armory. Included was Stuart Davis' 1912 painting, "Romance/The Doctor," on loan to the Montclair Museum for the exhibition.

His jaunty "ashcan school" painting of a smirking lady and undressing man in a rowboat was not the stuff of which riots were made.

Neither was 1911's "Hackensack River" by Oscar Bluemner or 1911's "Sailing" by Edward Hopper (both in the Montclair exhibit). In fact, most of the 1,200-plus works at the International Exhibition of Modern Art — its official title — at the 69th Regiment Armory on Lexington Avenue, was post-impressionist art that wouldn't raise an eyebrow, then or now.

What caused a sensation was a tiny, notorious group of wild, avant-garde works that — to conventional 1913 eyes — seemed a slap in the face of taste, rationality, even sanity.

"It was a relatively small percentage [of art], in two galleries in the back," says Gail Stavitsky, chief curator of the Montclair Museum. "You had to go through everything else to get to the 'chamber of horrors,' as they called it."

The shock of Duchamp's "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2," the most famous of these, was not the racy title. It was the painting itself. There was no nude, there was no staircase. Not to 1913 eyes, at least: just a bunch of angular, overlapping, jutting shapes.

Most of us, today, can see where a nude and staircase are at least suggested. Nor was Duchamp the first to create abstract art: Picasso, Braque and others had pioneered it a decade before.

By the early 1900s, over-refined European art was starting to look to new kinds of inspiration: to "primitive" cultures, to machines, to cinema, to the unconscious (Freud published his "Interpretation of Dreams" in 1900). Old dogmas were being questioned, new avenues explored. There was in fact a "new spirit" — the slogan of the Armory show.

But until 1913, most of this had not filtered down to the general public. "Nude Descending a Staircase," and the other "cubist," "futurist" works at the Armory, caused a sensation. There were snarky newspaper cartoons making fun of "Sun Rise in a Lumber Yard," or depicting a man staring at an abstract painting while standing on his head. "No! I do not see it yet," he says. The Chicago Record ran a contest: Spot the Nude in Nude Descending a Staircase.

"Through the media and press reports, the exhibition went beyond the usual suspects, the elites," says Alejandro Anreus, chair of the art department at Wayne's William Paterson University.

In 1913, more than today perhaps, the general public was engaged in the fine arts. Engaged, in the case of "The Rite of Spring," to the point of violence.

Music, like visual art, was becoming wilder in the early 1900s. Among the young lions: Igor Stravinsky, an expatriate Russian composer who teamed with the Paris "Ballets Russes" to present exotic ballets with dissonant modern scores.

Ballet, at the time, still meant ballerinas, tutus, pirouettes. "The Rite of Spring" ("Le Sacre du Printemps") involved pagan tribes, primitive rituals, human sacrifice. There is some question, today, about what really sparked the riot: whether it was the weird, herky-jerky choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, or the roaring, heaving, pounding, seething, utterly dissonant music (still shocking 27 years later, when Walt Disney used it for the dinosaur sequence of "Fantasia").